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Season two of Game of Thrones was thrilling. You had a deadly smoke assassin, Tyrion Lannistertrying to hold King's Landing together under the inept ruleof King Joffrey and Jon Snow flirting with the red-headed Wildlingfrom Downton Abbey . Most of you know what I'm talking about not because yousubscribe to HBO, but because you download the series illegally. Infact, according to TorrentFreak, Game of Thrones was the most downloaded TV show of the season. Nearly 4 million people downloaded episodes viaBitTorrent during the spring, which, incidentally, is nearly thenumber of people who watched it on cable. ( MORE: Why HBO Is Once Again TV s Most Relevant Network ) The next two most downloaded shows, How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory , both came in at under 3 million downloads, a much smallerfraction of their total TV viewership (both more than 8 millionviewers per episode). Keep in mind that downloads throughBitTorrent make up only a fraction of illegal TV viewing plentyof people watch shows through streaming sites set up overseas. Why are as many people illegally downloading Game of Thrones as are watching it on cable? Perhaps because they can't getit any other way at least not without a cable subscription.Unlike Mad Men , you can't download Game of Thrones on iTunes, nor can you watch it on Hulu, Netflix or any otherlegitimate streaming site. Thus the strange trend I noticed in my Twitter feed a few days ago.I started seeing tweet after tweet telling me how much people wouldpay for a standalone HBO streaming service. Turns out it was allpart of the " Take My Money, HBO! " campaign started by Jake Caputo, 28, a freelance webdesigner from Carpentersville, IL. "I just wanted to get the attention of HBO," Caputowrote to TIME in an email. "I'm not storing any data,I'm not taking a poll, I'm just trying to point out toHBO that they have people willing to pay them for a standalone HBOGO service." For tech-savvy consumers who watch almost everything online, theidea of HBO offering a standalone HBO GO service for $10, $20 or$30 per month seems like a no-brainer. But HBO doesn't liveon an island; it's part of a incredibly profitable cableecosystem that the major players have no interest in dismantling.Caputo, however, doesn't buy it. "Many of the arguments people are making is that HBOcan't survive without the support of big cable, but who saysthey'd have to cut ties? If HBO wants to offer itself for $15on top of a cable subscription that's fine, but whycan't they offer it for $40 as a standalone as well?" The bottom line is that HBO's parent company (and that ofTIME), Time Warner, doesn't want to hurt its cable businessor its other networks like TBS and CNN. If HBO were independent,maybe and that's a big maybe it would have an incentiveto offer HBO GO to non-subscribers. But it isn't. As DerekThompson at The Atlantic points out , "HBO leans on cable, and cable leans on HBO." For cable providers to be able to charge you $80 every month, theyneed blue chip networks to convince people to pay for channels theymight not want otherwise. One of those is HBO. Another is ESPN. I got excited for a split second when I heard thenews that live sports were coming to the Xbox 360 . Then I quickly assumed (correctly) that these services including live broadcasts from ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU would beonly available to cable subscribers. Why? Because ESPN is a huge draw and cable providers are willing topay top dollar to keep it exclusive. According to SNL Kagan, cableproviders will pay an average of $5.15 per month per subscriberthis year. Add EPSN 2 and all of ESPN's other channels andthe price passes $6. To put that in perspective, only a few othernetworks can charge even $1. "People are nervous about the whole issue oftime-shifting," says Derek Baine, senior analyst at SNLKagan. "I think that s why you're seeing, even duringa recession, significant price increases in sports rights. In thefuture, it s only going to get worse with DVR penetration risingand people getting more comfortable with technology and watchingless TV." In other words, live sporting events are the one thing thatviewers, cable providers and advertisers can't get enough of.ESPN, like HBO, has the appeal to create its own hugely popularstreaming product. The problem is the $6 it gets from every cablesubscriber. Threaten cable and you threaten a reliable cash cow. Even if you don't care about HBO or ESPN, cord-cutting canstill be difficult. Ever notice those great package deals cablecompanies offer? That's because they don't want youchoosing only one service: Make broadband expensive enough on itsown and people will opt for TV as well. If more people startcord-cutting, there's no reason that cable companiescouldn't start increasing the price of broadband serviceoutside of a package deal. People might be able to live withouteither TV or Internet, but not both. As for the streaming services available now, there's noguarantee they'll remain a viable option for cord-cutters.Hulu which counts NBCUniversal, News Corporation and the WaltDisney Company as major stakeholders is reportedly thinkingabout requiring users to authenticate their cable subscription before watching. Netflix might have plenty of TV shows ready to stream, butit's lacking lots of recent movies. As the Starz debacle showed, content providers are wary that the money made in aNetflix deal won't necessarily offset losses from their cableTV businesses. So it looks like cable is safe for now. That doesn't meanthat cord-cutting isn't something that won't take offin the future. "I see the issue being younger collegestudents that have never paid for a cable subscriptionbefore," says Baine. "If they continue on that pathwayand the older generation dies, that s when [cable providers] havea problem." MORE: Why You Shouldn t Just Blame Your Cable Company for that $200 Bill. I am an expert from wwsgift.com, while we provides the quality product, such as Metal Keychains , Flower Garland Lights, Bike Reflectors,and more.
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